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HON. H. WINTER DAVIS, 



OF MARYLAND, 



THE RESOLUTION OFFERED BY MR. COLFAX PROPOSING 
^ THE EXPULSION OF MR. LONG. 


. - ... — . , . 

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, APRIL 11, 1864. 

y - 

The House having under consideration the resolution offered by Mr. Colfax, pro- 
posing the expulsion of Mr. Long, Mr. DAVIS said : 

Mr. Speaker : A singular disposition has been manifested to avoid the ques- 
tion before the House, I desire to call your attention to that question before I 
follow the gentlemen on the other side in the rather irrelevant discussion in 
which they have indulged. 

It is nut whether in the House of Representatives of the United States 
of America freedom of opinion is secured by law, nor whether the free- 
dom of speech and of the press in the constitutional right of the Ameri- 
can citizeD, but whether the gentleman who delivered the speech now in 
question is a fit and worthy member of this House ; not whether, out of doors, 
in his private capacity, he would be entitled to entertain and as an individual 
to express the opinions which he has uttered here, but whether as a legislator 
charged to protect the interests of the people, sworn to maintain the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, he has not avowed a purpose inconsistent with those 
duties, a resolution not to maintain but to destroy ; a determination not to de- 
fend but to yield up undefended to the enemies of the United States what he 
was sent heie to protect. That is the question: — and that is the only question 
which has not been discussed by the defenders of the gentleman from Ohio. 

They tell us words cannot be the subject of animadveision under the rules of 
this House, nor under the Constitution of the United States! What becomes 
of the resolution declaring the member from Maryland [Mr. Harris] to be an 
unworthy member of this House, adopted by their votes on Saturday ? WJial 
becomes of the solemn adjudication as far back as 1842, when a majority of 
this House asserted the right to censure Joshua R. Giddings, nor for introduc- 
ing a petition to dissolve the Union, but for offering resolutions for the con- 
sideration of this House declaring that the mutineers of the Creole were not 
responsible for any criminal act under the laws of the United States, interpreted 
by the resolution of censure into a justification of mutiny and murder ? 

It is the judgment of this House, and therefore not necessary to be argued by 
me, that words mav prove criminality when they reveal a criminal purpose; 
and, if they are sufficiently criminal, that they may be visited first by ceusure, 
and, if they judge it necessary to the public safety, by expulsion from the 
House. I do not envy the gentlemen who refused to expel the gentleman from 
Maryland for language uttered in the presence of us all, which they immediately 
after voted to declare tended and was designed to give aid and encouragement 






to the public enemies of the nation, and therefore he was an unworthy member 
of the House. Sir, it would seem to have been the logical conclusion that if he 
is an unworthy member of the House he ought not to be suffered to remain in 
it, and that gentlemen who so thought would have so said on the first vote for 
expulsion. How gentlemen will reconcile that glaring inconsistency to their 
constituents, how they who have declared the gentleman from Maryland an 
unworthy member but that he should remain a member, who asserted the 
right to punish by inflicting punishment but refused the only adequate penally 
for the offense of which they voted him guilty, will justify themselves in the face 
of their own votes, it is for them to consider. It would be cruel to aggravate 
their embarrassments by any observations. Ah hac scabie tenectjnus ungues. 

But it remains conceded by the votes of our opponents that in spite of the 
Constitution of the United States, in spite of the conceded freedom of opinion, 
in spite of the conceded freedom of speech, words are and may be here, not out 
of doors, but here in this House, here upon a subject before the House for con- 
sideration, here where everybody has the right to express his views upon every 
measure before the House, words are and have been adjudged by the votes of 
our opponents to be criminal, to be punishable, and they have been punished 
within two days. 

The measure of judgment is a matter of discretion. The Constitution says 
that with the consent of two-thirds either House may expel a member: that 
means not capriciously but for some wrong, for misconduct, for acts, for words, 
for purposes, for avowals inconsistent with his duty on this floor, tending to 
show that he is not a safe depositary of the great powers of a Representative ; 
and the only constitutional criterion of what is and what is not adequate cause 
of expulsion is the judgment of two thirds of this House. 

If that be so, the only further question we have to ask is, whether the' gen- 
tleman from Ohio, respectable as he is in his private relations, respectable as 
has been his conduct in this House, honesty as his convictions may be enter- 
tained, has not placed himself beyond the pale of that protection which this 
House accords to freedom of speech, not by speaking as he ought not to have 
spoken, but by avowing himself in favor of the destruction of the nation. 

Now, what is the charge against him? That his judgment is that there are 
but two alternatives : one, the extermination of the enemies of the United 
States, and the other the destruction of the United States itself, which he puts 
in the form of a recognition of the southern States as an independent Govern- 
ment. And not resting on that mere declaration of opinion, and the alterna- 
tive resting in his own mind, he goes further and says that of the two he pre- 
ferred the latter. That means, " 7, here a Representative, charged and sworn 
to the extent of my whole influence in the legislation of this House to protect 
and maintain the integrity of the nation, have come to the conclusion, in the 
midst of a great war, when the existence of the nation is at stake, that, rather 
than exterminate the enemies of the nation, I will exterminate the nation." 
He proclaims himself the friend of the enemies of the nation, and an enemy 
himself of the United States. He avows it his purpose to destroy it at the first 
opportunitv, to the extent of his vote. The rebel chiefs proclaim independence 
or extermination the only alternatives. The gentleman from Ohio declares ex- 
termination or independence the only alternatives. The rebel chiefs prefer the 
recognition of their independence to their extermination. The gentleman from 
Ohio avows himself for recognition and against extermination ; and recognition 
of the southern confederacy means the dissolution of the United States. The 
Constitution proclaims the perpetuity of the Union ; and that Constitution re- 
cognizes no dissolution, no end of its existence. Sworn to maintain that Constitu- 
tion, he now says: "In violation of a solemn oath, in spite of the duty I am 
sent here to discharge, rather than maintain it to the extent of exterminating its 
enemies, I will destroy it." 



Now, that is the case stated in plain language. It has not been stated here 
before to day. And the question which we are bound as gentlemen and as legis- 
lators to determine is, whether a gentleman, acknowledged to be respectable, be- 
lieved to be sincere, entertaining and avowing purposes which do not differ from 
those of the chief of the rebel confederacy, or of the men in armed array beyODcl 
the Potomac bent on ejecting us from this Hall, is the fit companion of gentlemen 
here, a fit depositary of his constituents' vote, a safe person to be intrusted here 
with the secrets of the United States, a worthy guardian of the existence of the 
Republic. Are we to be seriously told that the freedom of speech screens a 
traitor because he puts his treasonaole purposes in words ? Does the Constitu- 
tion secure the right of our avowed enemies to vote in this Hall? May a man 
impudently declare that his purpose here is so to vote as to promote the success 
of the rebellion, to embarrass and paralize the Government in its suppression, to 
secure its triumph and our overthrow, to bring the aimed enemy to Washing- 
ton, or arrest our army lest it exterminate that enemy ? Then why do not the 
congress at Richmond adjourn to Washington, push us from our stools, 
and by parliamentary tactics, under the Constitution, arrest the wheels of 
Government ? You could not expel them ? Sir, that picture is history, recent 
history. In 1860 that side of the House swarmed with the avowed enemies of 
the Republic. One after one, as their stars dropped from the firmament of the 
Union, they went out; some with tears in their eyes over the miseries they 
were about to inflict; some of them with exultation over the coming calamities; 
some of them with contemptuous lectures to the members in the House ; some 
stayed behind to do the traitor's business in the disguise of honest legislators in 
both Houses as long as they dared. One disgraced the Senate for one long 
session after armed men were soaking their native soil with their blood, and 
now he is in the ranks of our enemies. 

Are we to be told that gentlemen, entertaining not these opinions but these 
purposes, resolved to the extent of their power to paralize the Government, and 
only limited in what they can do by what it may be safe to do, must be allowed 
not merely to be members of the House, but to rise and insoluntely fling in our 
faces the avowal of their enemity, and invoke the Constitution of the United 
States in order that they may stab it to the heart ? Shall men rise here and be 
allowed to express, whether in one form of phraseology or another, as may best 
aid the public enemy, their desire for the triumph of the rebel cause, and that, 
being too tender-hearted to wish that the enemies of the Unites States may be 
exterminated, they prefer our ruin? And is it to be said that that comes within 
the sacred shield of the freedom of public opinion, the right of debate, the 
freedom of speech ? Why, sir, it is not opinion that we complain of. It is not 
liberty of speech that we wish to restrict. On the the contrary, I thank the 
gentleman [Mr. Long] for his speech, for it revealed an enemy, and an avowed 
is a more respectable than a concealed foe. He is more frank than the gentle- 
man from New York, [Mr. Fernando Wood,] who, with similar seutiments, 
conceals them. He is more manly than that gentleman from New York, who 
on Saturday rose before the House with a paper in his hand, declaring it to be 
the identical sheet from which the gentleman from Ohio read, read it rlaunt- 
ingly in the face of the House, and declared that he concurred in every word 
of it, and that if the House expelled the gentleman from Ohio it must expel 
him also : — but to-day, frightened by the .explosion of the indignation of the 
House on the head of the gentleman from Maryland, was careful to say that he 
did not at all agree with the opinions for which the gentleman from Ohio is 
called in question, Commend me, sir, to an open adversary. I can respect the 
one ; I cannot have so much respect for the other. It is cot for the freedom of 
the avowal, it is the entertaining the purpose which he does avow ; it is not 
that he violated the order of the House, it is because he violates the law of the 
country by his purpose to destroy it, that the gentleman from Ohio is arraigned. 



Wc do not punish him for saying •what he did, we piraish him for meaning 
what he declared he does mean to . do. And that is what we are called 
upon to do by the highest considerations of public policy, the plainest dictates- 
of patriotic duty. 

Oh ! but wc are told that it touches the rights of his constituents. Let his 
constituents have an opportunity to pass upon that, after this declaration of 
purpose. But we must have mutual consideration for each other! Why, cer- 
tainly, sir. But how far? Is there no end to patience? Is there no avowal 
showing criminal intent which wisdom requires we should guard against before- 
hand? What do you suppose would be the fate of a man sitting in the capitol 
at Richmond who should arise there and propose to recognize the supremacy 
of the United States? Do you suppose that the freedom of debate which gen- 
tlemen have enjoyed on this floor would have been tolerated, even if desired by 
anybody \ Is it not certain that he would have been expelled, if he lived long 
enough for the vote of expulsion to be taken ? Suppose that in the French 
Assembly, when the life of France was at stake, as the life of this nation is now 
at stake, and when heroic men were struggling to maintain it, some one had 
arisen and proposed to call back the Bourbons, and place the reins of Govern- 
ment in their hands — how long would he have remained a member of that 
body? Suppose that the day before the battle of Culloden, or the day after 
the battle of Preston Pans, some Jacobite had arisen in the House of Commons 
of England and declared himself of the opinion that the Pretender could not 
be expelled without the extermination of the Jacobites, and that therefore they 
should place him on the throne of Eugland! Do you think the traditional liberty 
of speech in England would have saved him from summary expulsion ? Do you 
think there is any law in England that could have stood between him and, not 
expulsion, but death ? Would not the act have been considered a crime, and 
the declaration of it in Parliament have been considered an aggravation of 
the crime, demauding his expulsion ? Would not the vote of that body have 
been instantaneous, and his execution swifter than that vote? 

Are we to be told here that men are to rise in this Hall, where the guns of the 
impending battle will echo in our ears, when we sit here only because we have 
one hundred and fifty thousand bayonets between us and the enemy; when 
Washington is a great camp, the centre of thirty miles of fortifications stretch- 
ing around us for our protection ; are we to be told that here, within this citi- 
del of the nation, an enemy may beckon with his hand to the armed foe, assur- 
ing him of friends within the people's Hall, at the very centre of power, and 
we cannot expel him ? 

Sir, let me say to this House that if it were a constitutional right so to speak, 
in my judgment this is one of those cases which so far transcends the ordinary 
rules of law, one of those cases which carries us so near to the original right 
of self-defense, one of those cases which appeals so directly to the inalienable 
right of self-protection, that without law and in spite of law the safety of the 
people- requires his expulsion, and I would be one to do it. But, sir, I do not 
think the Constitution does confer the right so to speak. I think we are within 
the limits of written law which the wisdom of our forefathers gave us with 
which to protect ourselves in every emergency, and this among others. And 
the only question is whether the patriotism of this House goes to the extent of 
the two thirds of its members required to rid it of the presence of an avowed 
public enemy. That, and that alone, is the question. 

But, Mr. Speaker, wc are told that this is a question of opinion. If it 
be, it is one of those questions of opinion that nobody in this country 
has a right to be on more than one side of. On one side is patriotism, 
duty, and an oath. On the other is treason, crime, and perjury. It is our 
duty for the protection of a man in his opinion to allow him to destroy the 
nation we are trying to defend ? Where, in the record of nations, do yor, 



find an illustration of that position ? By what examples in history do yon de- 
fend it? By -what precedent of statesmanship? The great name of Chatham 
has often, in this debate, been invoked and desecrated to cover this avowal of pre- 
ference for the enemy over the country. His example is wretchedly misunder- 
stood. Doubtless his voice was lifted in warning tones against taxation with- 
out our consent, and still fiercer against war to enforce it. His example might 
be pleaded for moderation and respect for the rights of our southern fellow- 
citizens ; but they have not been violated. But never, never to sanction a 
division of the Republic. His example is the bitterest reproach to those who 
claim its protection. After years of war unjustly begun and weakly waged, 
when exhausted England sank before the combined arms of America and 
France, and the Duke of Richmond rose in the House of Lords to move for 
peace with America, the patriotic soul of Chatham, was stirred within him at 
the thought of the humiliation and division of that empire whose limits he had 
expanded and whose name he had decorated ; and, hail and dying, his legs 
swathed in flannel, his crutch in his hand, he was borne to the House of 
Lords in the arms of his great son to lift his last voice in execration of the folly 
which had brought England to such humiliation, and to enter his dying pro- 
test against the recognition of American independence, already secured in fact 
by the sword. His English hea< t had no fear of exterminating the enemies of 
England in the hoi}" work of maintaining the integrity of her empire. Sir, I 
accept the example, and I commend it to the consideration of the patriotic 
o-entlemen on the other side of the House. I bes: them to read a little further 
than they seem to have done, the. history of the English statesman. Freedom 
of opinion ! Surely, sir, opinion is the breath of our nation. It is the measure 
of every right, the guarantee of every privilege, the protection of every bless- 
ing. It is opinion which creates our rulers. It is opinion that nerves or palsies 
their arm. It is opinion which casts down the proud and elevates the humble. 
Its fluctuations are the rise and fall of parties ; its currents bear the nation on 
to prosperity or ruin. Its free play is the condition of its purity. It is like the 
ocean, whose tides rise and fall day by day at the fickle bidding of the moon ; 
vet it is the great scientific level from which every height is measured — the 
herizon to which astronomers refer the motion of the stars. But, like the 
ocean, it has depths whose eternal stillness is the condition of its stability. 
Those depths of opinion are not free, and it is they that are touched by the 
words which have so moved the House. Men must not commit treason and 
say its guilt is matter of opinion and its punishment a violation of its freedom. 
Men cannot swear to maintain the integrity of the nation and avow their in- 
tention to descioy it, and cover that double crime by the freedom of speech. 
That is to break up the fountains of the great deep on which all Government 
is borne, and to pour its flood in revolutionary ruin over the land. To punish 
that is not a violation of the freedom of opinion or its expression. It is to 
protect its normal ebb and flow, its free and healthy fluctuations, that we de- 
sire to relieve it from the opprobrium of being confounded with the declaration 
of treasonable, purposes- here in the high and solemn assemblage of the Nation. 
The free expression of opinion! I am at a loss to know how the opinions of 
Abraham Lincoln, or Horace Grcely, or Wendell Philips, or the gentleman 
from Ohio, [Mr. Schenck,] or Mr. Chase, if truly quoted, and equally crimi- 
nal with those now arraigned, can extenuate their guilt or shield their author 
from the indignation of the House. Their guilt is not his innocence. If he 
imitated their guilt, let him follow their repentance. The time which they have 
devoted to atoning for error by patriotic services he has dedicated to indurating 
his error and accomplishing his unpatriotic purposes. But I am nut concerned 
to vindicate in them what I condemn in him. I execrate the avowal equally in 
every mouth ; and if their guilt is beyond my judgment, that of the gentleman 
from Ohio is not. I can well understand how such examples may serve to screen 



6 

the Democratic party or to delude an ill-informed crowd and teach them that trea- 
son is error of opinion and not a crime ; but they cannot be successfully urged 
here before the gentlemen of the Uouse of Representatives to exculpate the gen- 
tleman from Ohio ; nor even, sir, can it vindicate the Democratic party from the 
ebai ge of more sympathy with the enemies of the country than with the coun- 
try itself. The people will laugh at this attempt to impeach the loyalty of the 
friends of the administration. They will see in this zealous defense of the gen- 
tleman from Ohio only another proof of Democratic sympathy with his views 
and purposes, hitherto invariably manifested wherever they have been in pow- 
er. Where have they had power that they have not exhibited their sympathy 
with the enemies of the Republic? I admit there are houorable exceptions. 
I admit there are cases of honest delusion. I suppose there are cases of uncon- 
scious sympathy. I cannot doubt the prevalence of a criminal interest in the tri- 
umph of the rebels. I shall not discriminate one from the other. I speak of the 
party and its conduct. Where, since the war broke out, from the time that 
James Buchanan disgraced the American name by his message declaring, as 
gentlemen on that side of the House declare now, that this war is waged in 
violation of the Constitution, that there is no power to coerce a sovereign State, 
down to this day, is there a Democratic Governor or Legislature which, until 
warned by the indignant voice of the people, has not tried to embarrass and 
discredit the Government and to give aid and encouragement to its enemies? 
The disavowals of individuals cannot extenuate the conduct of Legislatures 
and Governors. The prudence or cunning of caucuses or Congressmen, since 
the chastisement of 1863, cannot make the people forget the conduct which 
provoked it. Will they ever forget the Legislature of Indiana and its votes on 
the resolutions for armistice and peace, which swarmed before it ; or the Le- 
gislature of Illinois and the bill to strip the Governor of his just military au- 
thority ; and the resolutions for an armistice and a convention at Louisville of 
western and rebel States, to dictate terms to the United States, actually adopt- 
ed, I think, by one House; or the New Jersey Legislature, which sent Wall of 
Fort Lafayette to the United States Senate, and was ready to adopt peace reso- 
lutions, but for an accidental adjournment which enabled the membets to ga- 
ther the whisperings of their indignant constituents? How have they express- 
ed their sympathies on the side of the United States, unless by attempting to 
array the State authorities against the United States, to exeite the prejudices 
of the people against the necessary suspension of the habeas corpus, to repre- 
sent the assertion of the supremacy of the Uuited States courts and officers in 
the enforcement of United States laws as invasions of the rights of the States? 
What Deniociat in Pennsylvania did not vote for Woodward? What Demo- 
crat in New York did not vote' for Horatio Seymour? What Democrat in 
Connecticut did not vote for Seymour of Connecticut ? What Deinocrat in Ohio 
did not vote for Vallandigham ? It is vain to attempt to conceal it. The his- 
tory of that party during the war proves the declaration made on this floor that 
there is no such thing as a Democratic party for the war: its elastic mantle 
covets equally those who, like the gentleman from New Yoik [Mr. Kernan] 
have a love for the Union and fail when he comes to vote on it, and those who, 
like the gentleman from Maryland, [Mr. Harris,] glory in the failure of the 
armies of the United States to conquer the States in rebellion. 

The gentleman from New York [Mr. Kernan] who last spoke, and whose 
earnest tones all must have felt, declared himself ready to do all in his power to 
suppress the insurrection, and yet he failed to vote for the conscription bill, the 
indispensable condition to the prosecution of the war. That is the type of the 
war Deinocrat! Very earuest in vague generalities for the war, equally earnest 
in decrying the policy of the Administration, but, having exhausted their earn- 
estness on those topics, are so unable on any practical measure to tear them- 
selves away from party association, so penetrated with valetudinarian views or 



perverse judgments on the Constitution of the United States, that their aid is 
more embarrassing than their opposition. 

But, Mr. Speaker, if it be said that a time may come when the question of re- 
cognizing the southern confederacy will have to be answered, I admit it; and it is 
answering the strongest and the extreme case that gentlemen on the other side 
can present. I admit it. When a Democrat shall darken the White House 
and the land ; when a Democratic majority here shall proclaim that freedom 
of speech secures impunity to treason and declare recognition better than ex- 
termination of traitors; when Yallandigmam shall be Governor of Ohio, 
and Bright Governor of Indiana, and Woodward Governor of Pennsylvania, 
and Seymour Governor of Connecticut, and Wall Governor of New Jersey, and 
the gentleman from New York city [Mr. Wood] sit in Seymour's seat, and thus, 
possessed of power over the great centre of the country, they shall do what they 
attempted in vain before in the midst of rebel triumphs — array the authori- 
ties of the States against those of the United States ; oppose the militia to 
the Army of the United States; invoke the habeas corpus to discharge con- 
fined traitors; deny to the Government the benefit of the laws of war, lest 
it exterminate its enemies; when the Democrats, as in the fall of 1862, shall 
again, with more permanent success, persuade the people of the country that 
the war should not be waged till the integrity of the territory of the Union is 
restored, cost what it might, that such a war violates the spirit of free in- 
stitutions, which those who advocate it wish to overthrow, that it should 
stop, for their benefit, somewhere this side of absolute triumph, lest there 
be no room for a compromise ; when gentlemen of that party in New York 
shall again, as in November, 18G2, hold illegal and criminal negotiations 
with Lord Lyons, avow their purposes to him, the representative of a for- 
eign and unfriendly Power, and urge him to arrange the time of proffering 
mediation with a view to their possession of power and their preparation of 
the minds of the people to receive suggestions from abroad; when media- 
tion shall appear, by the event, to be the first step toward foreign intervention, 
swiftly and surely followed by foreign armed enemies upon our shores to join 
the domestic enemies; when the war in the cars shall begiD, whi -h was men- 
aced at the outbreak of the rebellion, and the friends of Seymour shall make the 
streets of New York run with blood, on the eve of another Gettysburg less dam- 
aging to their hopes ; when McClellan and Fitz John Porter shall have agr.in 
brought the rebel armies within sight of Washington city and the successor of 
James Buchanan shall withdraw our armies from the unconstitutional invasion 
of Virginia to the north of the Potomac; when exultant rebels shall sweep 
over the fortifications and their bomb-shells shall crash against the dome of the 
Capitol ; when thousands throughout Pennsylvania shall seek refuge on the 
shores of Lake Erie from the rebel invasion, cheered and welcomed by the op- 
ponents of extirmination ; when the people, exhausted by taxation, weary of 
sacrifices, drained of bloood, betrayed by their rulers, deluded by demagogues 
into believing that peace is the way to union and submission the path to vic- 
tory, shall throw down their arms before the advancing foe ; when vast chasms 
across every State shall make apparent to every eye, when too late to 
remedy it, that division from the South is anarchy at the North, and that 
peace without union is the end of the Republic — then the independence 
of the South will be an accomplished fact, and gentlemen may, without treason 
to the dead Republic, rise in this migratory House, wherever it may then be in 
America, and declare themselves for recognizing their masters at the South 
rather than exterminating them ! Until that day, in the name of the Ameri- 
can nation ; in the name of every house in the land where there is one dead 
for the holy cause ; in the name of those who stand before us in the ranks of 
battle ; in the name of the liberty our ancestors have confided to us, I devote 



8 

to eternal execration the name of him who shall propose to destroy this blessed 
Land rather tban its enem 

Bu until that time arrive, it is the judgment of the American people there 
shall be no compromise; that ruin to ourselves or ruin to the southern 
rebels are the only alternatives. It is only by resolutions of this kind that 
nations can rise above great dangers and overcome them in crises like this, 
It was oplj by turning Fiance into a camp, resolved that Europe might exter- 
minate, but should not subjugate her, that Fiance is the leading empire of Eu- 
rope to-day. It is by such a resolve that the American people coercing a 
reluctant Government) to draw the sword and stake the national existence on 
the integrity of the Republic, are now anything but the fragments of a nation 
before the world, the scorn and hiss of every petty tyrant. It is because the 
people of the United States, rising to the height of the occasion, dedicated 
this generation to the sword, and pouring out the blood of their children as 
of no account, and avowing before high Heaven that there should be no end 
to this conflict but ruin absolute or absolute triumph, that we now are what 
we are ; that the banner of the Republic still pointing onward floats proudly 
in the face of the enemy, that vast regions arc reduced to obedience, to the laws, 
and that a great host in armed array now presses with steady step into the dark 
regions of the rebellion. It is ouly by the earnest and abiding resolution of the 
people that whatever shall be our fate, it shall be grand as the American nation, 
worthy of that Republic which first trod the path of empire and made no peace 
but under the banners of victory, that the American people will survive in histo- 
ry. And that will save us. We shall succeed and not fail. I have- an abiding 
confidence in the firmness, the patience, the endurance of the American people ; 
and, having vowed to stand in history on the great resolve to accept of nothing 
but victory or ruin, victory is ours. And if with such heroic resolve we fall, 
we fall with honor, and transmit the name of liberty committed to our keeping 
untarnished, to y^o down to future generations. The historian of our decline 
and fall, contemplating the ruins of the last great Republic, and drawing from 
its fate lessons of wisdom on the waywardness of men, shall drop a tear as 
he records with sorrow the vain heroism of that people who dedicated and 
sacrificed themselves to the cause of freedom, and by their example will keep 
alive her worship in the hearts of men till happier generations shall learn to 
walk in her paths. Yes, sir, if we must fall, let our last hours be stained by 
no weakness. If we must fail, let us stand amid the crash of the falling Re- 
public ami be buried in its ruins, so that history may take note that men lived 
in the middle of the nineteenth century worthy of a better fate, but chastised 
by God for the sins of their forefathers. Let the ruins of the Republic remain 
to testify to the latest generations our greatness and our heioism. And let 
Liberty, crown-less and childless, sit upon these ruins, crying aloud in a Bad wail 
to the nations of the world, "I nursed and brought up children, and they 
have rebelled against me/' [Great applause on the floor and in the galleries.] 

Piiated by L. Towers & Co., cor. Louisiana avenue and Sixth street, Washington City. 

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